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The Big Bang
In 1996, Amelia Pond sits in her bedroom, praying to Santa Claus for help mending the crack in her bedroom wall. Believing she has heard something in her garden, she runs to her window. The garden is empty. Later, she gives a drawing she has done of the night sky -- complete with stars and the moon -- to her psychiatrist, Christine. Christine explains gently there are no stars. The night sky is empty save for the moon. That night, Amelia overhears Christine and her aunt talking about her. As she eavesdrops at the top of the stairs, she sees a pamphlet advertising the National Museum slipped through the letterbox by a familiar figure wearing a fez. He flees when she notices him. There is a circle drawn around a notice of the Pandorica exhibit and a note reading, "Come along, Pond." Amelia and her aunt go to the museum. Amelia runs off and makes her way to the Pandorica exhibit, passing a variety of strange machines on display; other exhibits are quite wrong as well. At the exhibit, Amelia sees another note stuck to the face of the box. It reads, "Stick around, Pond." This prompts Amelia to hide out in the museum to find out who is leaving notes for her. After the museum's close -- and Aunt Sharon's failure to find her -- Amelia returns to the Pandorica and curiously sets a hand on it. Mechanisms on the face of the box glow green, scaring Amelia enough to make her back a few feet away. The Pandorica opens, however instead of an imprisoned Doctor, the occupant of the perfect prison is actually the older Amy Pond. Noticing her younger self, Amy tells the confused Amelia, "Okay, kid, this is where it gets complicated." In 102 A.D. the Auton Rory cradles a dead Amy Pond, comforting himself by telling her how the universe ended. Suddenly, a fez-wearing Doctor appears in front of them. A confused Rory is instructed to free the Doctor from the Pandorica; the Doctor is already out. The Doctor explains that he IS already out, but back then, which is the present for Rory, he is yet to escape. Giving Rory his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor wishes him luck and informs him to put the sonic in Amy's top pocket when he's finished with it. Rory follows the Doctor's instructions, opening the Pandorica with the sonic screwdriver. A confused Doctor quickly deduces he'll set up the chain of events that lead to his release. Rory questions the Doctor about the stone remains of the Alliance; they are the after-images of the races that now never existed due to the destruction of the universe. Showing Amy to the Doctor, Rory punches him when he says she's not more important that the universe. The Doctor laughs, congratulating Rory for proving he's himself. Putting Amy in the Pandorica, the Doctor explains that when the Nestene copied Rory, they got a bit more than what they bargained for; Rory's very soul inhabits this Auton duplicate. Sealing the Pandorica once more with Amy inside, the Doctor explains to Rory that it prevents people from dying as it's a form of escape; it can stasis-lock Amy in a near death state until it gets an external sample of her DNA, which will take around 2000 years. Recovering River's vortex manipulator, the Doctor sets it for the future. Offering Rory a lift to the future, the Doctor is bewildered when he decides to remain behind to guard the Pandorica. Despite the warning that he'll go mad from never sleeping, Rory insists; the Doctor relents, but gives him fair warning to keep away from certain things before taking off. In the museum, Amy explores the Pandorica exhibit, paying no mind to the younger version of herself. She finds a video on the Lone Centurion -- a man in Roman armour who protected the Pandorica wherever it went for nearly two thousand years. He was last seen in 1941, dragging the box away from an incendiary bomb; it is believed the Centurian died in the inferno. Amy realises he was Rory, retaining her recovered memories of him, but there is no time for her to dwell on this. The restorative light from the Pandorica has reactivated a stone Dalek in the exhibition. The Doctor appears, having used the vortex manipulator to travel 1894 years into the future. The Dalek shoots at him and Amy, prompting them to take cover with young Amelia; they're trapped. A museum guard appears and the Dalek deems him unarmed. However, the guard uncaps his hand, revealing a laser gun to disable the Dalek. Amy rejoices when she sees that the guard is the Auton Rory. They kiss while the Doctor realises the "light" from the Pandorica restored the Dalek partially. He also takes a Fez from a display. The Dalek begins coming back to life once more. The Doctor leads the group away from the Dalek, blocking the door with a mop to buy time. With Rory's guidance, he fixes the timeline by travelling back to 102 A.D. and ordering that version of Rory to let him out of the Pandorica. He leaves the notes for Amelia, all of which led her here. Humorously, the Doctor even fullfils Amelia's request for a drink while running around the timeline, snatching it from the earlier version of herself at the museum. As they head for the roof, another version of the Doctor appears at the top of the stairs, badly injured. He falls down the stairs and whispers in the Doctor's ear before dying. The Doctor announces he has only twelve minutes to live. Amy is confused. The Doctor draws her attention to Amelia's disappearance; the universe is still collapsing, things are being erased from existence and the Doctor and his friends are alive only because they stand at "the eye of the storm." On the building's roof, their attention is drawn to the "sun" in the sky. The sun was erased with every other star in the universe. The object keeping the Earth warm and light is his TARDIS, exploding at every moment in history. Rory's enhanced hearing picks up a voice in the sky, which the Doctor amplifies with a satellite dish. It is River Song, whose last words -- "I'm sorry, my love" -- are repeated over and over. The TARDIS's emergency protocols have locked the console room in a time loop to save her life. The Doctor uses the vortex manipulator to rescue her and bring her to the roof, where his new hat is destroyed by River. The group is shot at by the regenerated Dalek. They retreat to the museum below. The Doctor runs through the museum, deducing that, along with the restoration field, the Pandorica contains a few billion atoms of the universe as it was. This was how the Dalek returned despite being erased from history. The Doctor formulates a plan involving these atoms, the restoration field and the exploding TARDIS. Just as he is about to reveal it, he is shot by the Dalek, who has followed them. He uses the vortex manipulator to disappear. Amy and Rory know where he is and go to him while River stays behind. After it discovers who River is from a search of its data banks, the Dalek begs for mercy, then is shot dead. Downstairs, Amy and Rory are confused. The Doctor's corpse is not where they left it. River returns to remind them the Doctor lies. He had pretended to die to distract them. They return to the exhibit and find the Doctor has strapped himself into the Pandorica. He will use the vortex manipulator to fly the box into the heart of the TARDIS, exploding at every point in history. The explosion will release the atoms of the preserved universe, restoring it. River admits gravely that the plan will work only if the Doctor seals himself on the other side of the cracks. The entire universe will be restored, but not the Doctor. He will never have existed at all. The Doctor and Amy say their goodbyes, and he admits that he took her with him because her life didn't make sense... living in a large house with only her Aunt. He then asks Amy what happened to her parents, and she answers that she lost them but is alarmed when she cannot recall the specific details. He explains that they weren't killed when Amy was young, but consumed by the time field in her bedroom wall which has been eating away at her whole life. He assures her that as long as she remembers her parents, she can bring them back like she did Rory and with her family around her she won't need her imaginary friend. He pilots the Pandorica into the explosion, resets the universe, disappearing from existence... ...and sits up on the floor of the TARDIS console room. He rejoices he has survived being erased -- until he sees Amy and himself from a week earlier, travelling to Space Florida; his timeline is unravelling. He calls to Amy. She hears him, but cannot see him. His life rewinds further. He is in a street in Colchester, watching Amy leave a note for him underneath Craig's advertisement for a new lodger. She still cannot see him. The Doctor notices a crack in the road behind him, sealing itself. He rewinds to the Byzantium; he approaches Amy -- her eyes shut to avoid being killed by the Weeping Angel -- and encourages her to remember what he told her when she was seven. He rewinds to 1996 and finds Amelia asleep in her back garden, awaiting his return. He carries her to bed and tells her the story of how he stole -- or, rather, "borrowed" -- the TARDIS, describing it romantically as "ancient and new, and the bluest blue ever." He sees the crack in her wall and tells her it can't close properly until he's on the other side and steps through, prefering not to see the rest of his life rewind. The crack in her wall closes. She wakes to an empty room and quickly goes back to sleep. In 2010, Amy wakes on her wedding day, surprised when her mother brings her breakfast. Her reaction to her parent strikes her as odd and she has the lingering feeling there is someone or something else missing. When she phones Rory to see if he feels the same way, he agrees blithely. Amy excitedly gets ready for her wedding. At the reception, she spots River Song outside, walking past the window. Rory presents her with a wedding gift someone has left -- River's blue TARDIS diary, all its pages blank. Amy begins to cry. Rory tries to explain away the diary by reminding her of the old wedding saying: "Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue." Amy interrupts her father's speech to announce that her imaginary childhood friend, "the raggedy Doctor," is real and he is late for her wedding. Abruptly, the TARDIS -- old and new, borrowed and blue -- materialises in the middle of the room. The Doctor steps out, admitting that he is completely astonished. Everyone at the wedding is shocked to discover that the Doctor wasn't a figment of Amy's imagination, while Rory suddenly remembers everything that happened to him and doesn't understand how he could possibly have forgotten. Later, after dancing maniacally and amusing Amy and Rory, the Doctor leaves to return to the TARDIS, now parked in Amy's garden. River Song appears behind him. He returns her vortex manipulator and her diary gravely before asking if she is married. She wonders if he is asking, and he says, "Yes," then stammers when he realises he has just unwittingly proposed to her. River teases him with further affirmations. The Doctor wonders who she really is. She says he will find out very soon, when everything changes. She leaves abruptly via vortex manipulator. Amy and Rory, still in their wedding finery, enter the TARDIS and encourage the Doctor to take the night off. He is reluctant -- they still do not know what led the TARDIS to the date of the temporal explosion and destroyed it, much less why. He also has not figured out the meaning of the "silence." As he ponders, he takes a phone call: an Egyptian goddess is on the loose on the Orient Express in space and the royal on the other end is concerned. The Doctor turns to bid Amy and Rory goodbye, but Amy runs to the door, bids her former life adieu and closes the TARDIS doors. The Doctor smiles and fires up the engines, sending the TARDIS spinning through the time vortex.